Countermeasures. Janie Crouch

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СКАЧАТЬ on. She immediately felt more secure with its familiar weight on her shoulders. She sat down and looked across the table.

      “So, Agent Branson, how can we help you here at Cyberdyne?”

      Evidently she had succeeded in adding the desired professionalism to her tone as she watched Agent Branson sit up a little straighter in his chair, his eyes narrowing slightly for just a moment. Obviously he was also expecting the nervous woman he had met earlier at the desk.

      Well, she wasn’t around anymore.

       Chapter Three

      Sawyer watched pretty Megan transform into stuffy, prickly Dr. Zane Megan Fuller—just like her name tag said—as she pulled on that drab lab coat and buttoned it. The skirt underneath, and evidently the shy woman from the desk, disappeared. Sawyer could almost feel the temperature drop around him.

      Okay, the asking her for coffee had been a bit of a misstep. Sawyer totally read that situation wrong—not something he was used to doing. He tried to think back to his conversation with Burgamy. Sawyer definitely would’ve remembered if his boss had said Dr. Fuller was an attractive young woman. Or if he had said woman at all.

      What had Sawyer been expecting in Dr. Fuller again? Someone balding, with thick glasses and a bow tie? Sawyer could admit he’d let a stereotype get the better of him. It was his own fault and he knew better. But when he’d seen pretty little Megan fumbling around at the desk, blinking up at him with those big brown eyes and blushing for goodness’ sake?

      It had never even crossed Sawyer’s mind that she would be the head computer scientist of a multimillion-dollar company. But the woman sitting across from him so coldly, lab coat around her like a suit of armor? He had no problem picturing her as Dr. Fuller, brilliant scientist.

      “Yes, Dr. Fuller. I’m sorry for the confusion before.” Reflexively Sawyer tried to smile at her, but he was met only with cold professionalism. “I’ve been sent here from the Bureau to discuss Ghost Shell.”

      Sawyer knew Megan would associate the word bureau with the FBI, but now wasn’t the time to explain about Omega Sector. Omega was a task force made up of representatives from all different sorts of government agencies—FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, hell, even Interpol—who answered to bosses inside Omega. The task force was generally kept on a need-to-know basis. All Megan needed to know right now was that Sawyer was from federal law enforcement.

      Megan nodded curtly. “I gave Ghost Shell to the FBI three months ago. Then I receive a follow-up call a few days ago with all sorts of questions you guys should already know the answer to.”

      Sawyer didn’t respond to that directly. “I understand you’ve been working on a countermeasure to Ghost Shell.”

      That obviously wasn’t the statement she was expecting. “Well, we were. But once I turned Ghost Shell over to the FBI, we put that on the back burner. Didn’t seem important to work on the antidote for a poison we’d already gotten rid of.”

      “Unfortunately, it looks like the poison is back.”

      “What?” Her big brown eyes blinked at him again, but this time with confusion rather than shyness.

      “Ghost Shell fell into the wrong hands not long ago.”

      “What?” Megan parroted herself. “I gave Ghost Shell to the FBI to keep that exact thing from happening.”

      Sawyer grimaced. “I understand your frustration.”

      Sawyer watched Megan’s small fists ball on the table. He slid back a little in his chair, since it looked as if she might start swinging any moment. Not that he could blame her.

      “My research team here at Cyberdyne put in hundreds of man-hours on Ghost Shell! The work we did was brilliant and could’ve potentially made Cyberdyne millions of dollars. But I chose—my team chose—to stop our progress when we realized how easily Ghost Shell could become a weapon.” One of her small fists came down forcefully on the table. “And now you’re telling me some terrorist group has it anyway?”

      “Well, yes and no.”

      One eyebrow rose. “I think perhaps you should just cut to the chase, Agent Branson.”

      Totally gone was the shy, stammering woman he had seen at the front desk. This woman in front of him—he definitely could not think of her as mousy in any way—was a force to be reckoned with.

      “The agent in charge of the technology you gave the FBI—”

      “Fred McNeil.”

      Sawyer shouldn’t be surprised that Megan remembered the name of an agent she’d spoken to months before, given her reputation. “Yes, Fred McNeil. Ends up he was also working for a crime-syndicate group known as DS-13.”

      Megan closed her eyes and shook her head, her breath coming out in a hiss. “And is this DS-13 group terrorists?”

      “No. But they would not hesitate to sell Ghost Shell to whatever terrorist faction was willing to pay the highest price.”

      “And now DS-13 has Ghost Shell.”

      “Again, yes and no.” Sawyer held his hand out to stop the sound of exasperation he knew was coming. “In a mission two weeks ago, one version—the working version—of Ghost Shell was recovered. But until we contacted you just a couple of days ago, we had no idea a second version of Ghost Shell even existed.”

      “But you don’t have the other version?”

      “No, Fred McNeil is still at large with it.”

      Megan got up and began pacing around her office. “The other version, although not as dangerous as the first, is still definitely not benign. It’s just as potentially dangerous.”

      “But it would take someone with a special set of skills to complete it, right?”

      Megan shrugged a delicate shoulder. “My ego would like to think so. But really, anybody skilled in reverse engineering—taking something apart and figuring out what makes it work—and software development could probably do it. There’s a dozen people at Cyberdyne alone.”

      “So the FBI should be acting on the assumption that Fred McNeil and DS-13 could have a working prototype at any time.”

      Megan took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, leaning back against her desk. “Absolutely. With the right help, it won’t take long.”

      “We’re going to do everything we can to stop that from happening.”

      “No offense, Agent Branson, but my trusting the FBI is how this whole problem happened in the first place.”

      Sawyer grimaced. There really wasn’t much argument around that one. “On behalf of the entire Bureau, I want to apologize for what happened. Nobody had any idea that Fred McNeil had flipped.”

      “Well, thanks for the apology, but that doesn’t necessarily make me feel much better.” The ice doctor was back in full force. “Did you work with Agent McNeil?”

      “No. I’m СКАЧАТЬ